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mikejuk writes with a bit from I Programmer on what sounds like an intriguing new game: "If you're bored with games where you run around shooting soldiers or monsters, how about a game where you shoot enemies to win computer code snippets that you can then use to shape the reality around you? It's good to play and good enough to win both the Editor's Choice and Kid's Choice at this year's Bay Area Maker Faire." The linked story has a video demo, too.

It looks like an attempt to create a Matrix-style world where you can shape it in real time. I'd worry a bit about it being over-simplified, but it does look (from the video) like you can type actual real code, so a good start.

Reminds me (a bit) of Droidbattles [bluefire.nu]. The problem in coding games is to create some objective for the code. Simply wandering around changing the world is cool, but it would get boring pretty quick, and it won't have many players without some goal behind the coding. So, a war between several sides, or battles between programs, something like that. Otherwise it's just a harder to use sandbox game. Which is cool and all, but not terribly interesting from a gameplay aspect.

Graphics? Is that all that matters? Just to use a car analogy, it's like buying a car for the new car smell, ignoring its performance or mileage.

In a nutshell, the "wow" effect wears off rather quickly. After that, what's left is gameplay. And given the choice between graphics that requires me to buy the next generation graphics card for 1000+ bucks and gameplay that keeps me hooked beyond the time when a throwaway computer could render it sensibly, I choose gameplay over graphics any time.

Put it another way: Remember the Matrix games? They were all entertaining, and they were all about real goals, just like the movies were. However, they had no actual coding or hacking in them -- one had a commandline minigame, but as far as actual gameplay, they were shooters/fighters with additional powers -- so, "hacking" the Matrix boiled down to something like Force abilities in a Star Wars game.

Both Tron and MAtrix are big inspirations but we take the actual literal reality of what exists in a 3D game engine world simulation as the rules of the land rather than making up movie-friendly metaphors with nerdy words. Matrix and Tron and Star Wars are all essentially fantasy sci fi: Lots of fun, but not closely linked to a physical reality. Although Code Hero takes place in a Matrix-like world, it has definite rules which players can master and exploit and one can parlay that mastery into creating your

Quite right. Code hero is fun as a creative challenge, but story and conflict are what drives the player to give them a REASON to make each creative leap. There is a sandbox mode where you can create and eventually share your worlds, but to start the priority is for young people who try it to get hooked enough so we can turn them into coders.

But I'm not sure I would want to use this as a learning tool if I didn't already know how to program computers. From what I can tell based on the video, it teaches you by showing you snippets of code and allowing you to see what they do, which could be confusing for somebody with no prior coding experience. In addition, it seems that code snippets in this game require a basic understanding of vector math/linear algebra - something that's an essential part of games and simulation, but might serve only to i

I think I may now have an vague idea how actual guitar players feel about Guitar Hero. Copying and pasting code should generally be avoided (refactored instead of duplicated if possible). Otherwise, if there is a bug in the code copied, you have to fix it in multiple places.

Creator here: Copying code is analogous to finding items in a regular RPG FPS. You can bind code to any hotkey on the keyboard till you are bristling with tools for creating and combating anything imaginable. But you can also instantly edit the code mid-combat or while solving puzzles to tweak variables at first and eventually to write your own code to solve problems.

Gamer gamers can enjoy this without knowing exactly how code works, but the story is full of actual training opportunities that teach you from syntax up to actual game development in Unity3D.

That's cool, and also practical, but also frightens me a bit. While I don't know of a better way of doing it, that is effectively training people that the way to code something is to find something similar and copy/paste.

About the only way I can think of also teaching DRY in a game is by giving the player a severely restricted environment either in terms of amount of source code or memory usage.

Actual guitar player here. Guitar hero / rock band is just a fun means to drink beer and play a video game with friends. No reason to compare it to the real activity....and I find it really annoying when "real musicians" would criticise the the game. Some people don't like fun I guess.

As someone who used to play Guitar Hero weekly with a few friends at our dorky bar, we got a lot of those whiners. The most commonly heard criticism was "if you have time to play that stupid thing, you have time to take guitar lessons". And then we'd politely tell the craggy old hippie to go fuck himself.

Sure, we could all have stayed home and practiced guitar until our fingers were reduced to bloody stumps, but that's beside the point. The interaction with the game was merely an excuse to hang out with

Copying and pasting code should generally be avoided (refactored instead of duplicated if possible). Otherwise, if there is a bug in the code copied, you have to fix it in multiple places.

Gasp, you have to fix it in multiple places? Sorry, but compared to refactoring, that is much faster. Especially if you're programming professionally, you avoid refactoring and copy/paste like a WINNER! Refactoring is a waste of time on code that you're probably going to throw away anyway. Refactoring (except when necessary) is a best practice only for people who write books or blogs, not for real programmers. Refactor only after you copy/pasted at least 10 times and you're pretty sure that you'll have to d

Single equals is the comparison operator if it's inside [[ ]] or following the test command (or within single []). It only works for assignment if there aren't spaces around it.:)

Wanna know what I think would actually happen? No? Ok, here it is anyway:

Let's assume the missing "fi" is added to close the if/else. The single parens after the if will execute a subshell. Then, in that subshell, $modPointsUp will be expanded, the first word in that expansion will be treated as a command, and any subsequent

You were only posting as a joke on on a forum. I work with people who would put this into production complete with the syntax errors, and eventually "fix" it by just sticking a "2>/dev/null" on the end./shakes head

I really like the cyberpunk virtual reality setting. It looks like a game straight out of the 90's. The concept of Code Hero sounds great, too, but the gameplay itself doesn't look all that interesting. It's hard to tell what the game will actually be like from descriptions and an in-development video, but it seems like there's a combination of shooting code blocks from a first-person perspective and actually writing code. I imagine that stopping to type code would slow down the rest of the game, but I'll w

I've noticed that you can usually tell the artistic quality of the people who make games based on what decade it looks like it came from. My stuff looks like it came from the 80s. Wonderful. These guys probably wrote code that looks like it came from the 90s because that is their skill level.

To make a modern looking game, you really need professional artists, and even actors and directors, etc.

Would you say that it would be the technical quality rather than the artistic quality of the developers?

I also didn't mean to imply that it looking like it's from the 90's is bad if I did; on the contrary, the style works for this type of game. It's in cyberspace, so everything looking abstract and computer-generated works for it.

Of course it's both, but building up the technical quality to write a game from the 90s isn't much harder than building up the technical qualities to write a game from the 80s. Back then, of course it was hard, they were pushing the limits of the machine, and that was true in both the 80s and 90s. Now the libraries are easier to use (you can download free, full-feature 3d shooter engines), the knowledge is more available (you can buy books that will teach you to make said engines), and you have lots of extr

I imagine that stopping to type code would slow down the rest of the game...

Maybe, but I don't see that causing problems in other games. Mass Effect, for instance, allows me to select abilities, change weapons, and otherwise order my squad around while the game is paused, but it's not like I'm tempted to stay in that mode forever -- more likely, I get into that for a few seconds, then back into the game.

Plus, it has a giant threatening countdown. I wonder if that pauses while you're typing code.

And I'm not going to lie, the gameplay is what looks most interesting here:

there's a combination of shooting code blocks from a first-person perspective and actually writing code.

Mass Effect, for instance, allows me to select abilities, change weapons, and otherwise order my squad around while the game is paused, but it's not like I'm tempted to stay in that mode forever -- more likely, I get into that for a few seconds, then back into the game. Plus, it has a giant threatening countdown. I wonder if that pauses while you're typing code.

Yeah, but there's arguably more room for error when typing code instead of commanding squads and customizing your character. You'd have to learn the syntax for the game as well. I'm not saying that this will be a drawback or anything like that, but rather that I'm worried about how well this gameplay will be executed when Code Hero is finished.

Come on! Who doesn't want a game that lets you write code and then apply it to a game world using a gun?

That is one of the coolest ideas I've heard of in a long time, to be honest:D

Yeah, but there's arguably more room for error when typing code instead of commanding squads and customizing your character.

I suppose, but then, there's also more error using mouse-aiming and WASD rather than auto-aim on a rail. Which one is more fun? I'm not even sure that I'm slower when I play without any sort of auto-aiming than when I have the game effectively cheat for me.

In the UK, most schools were kitted out with BBC Model B Micro computers in the mid-1980's. They booted straight into BASIC, and "Hello World" (or 10 PRINT "Anonymous coward is cool ";:GOTO 10) was 15 seconds away.

Simple programming skills were easy to learn, and the curious (a surprisingly large proportion of the class) could delve into more advanced techniques - BASIC games were easy to put together, and within a few weeks me and my contemporaries were putting together blackjack simulators, a Monopoly gam

Well if somebody just read the linked article and didn't watch the youtube video or go to the game site, they'd probably think the game was based on Java too. It was the original article that made that mistake.

This isn't a pacifist vs free expression thought, or a think-of-the-children and how there minds might be warped, type of comment. A lot of people enjoy FPS and other types of shooter games. Nothing wrong with that. But I personally like thinking / exploring games. The Myst series was my ideal type of game. I don't want an adrenalin fix. I want an immersive environment that presents me with challenges and puzzles which allow me to think quietly and not fight a clock. But based upon what is available on the

no you absolutely have a point, people have become used to being ridiculously over-armed in first-person games, which is too bad because it's a perspective that is great for immersiveness. Minecraft lets you do a lot more than shoot stuff, but others that exist are much less well-known. The Penumbra series and their successor, Amnesia, are games made by someone who has the same view, except with the adrenaline fix and a hearty dose of pure horror mixed in. I'm not sure if I know any recent titles that captu

Myst? The game that was purely graphics, with no game there? Not surprised you don't like action games. Why not just say that, without the suspicious disclaimer about wanting to warp children's minds? What the hell...

I do hope he isn't just running a blind eval() on whatever the input string he gets from the player. "while(true) {GameObject.FindWithTag ("Player").transform.position.y+=100;}" would be fun to watch. Or even better "var temp : Array; temp.Push(1);" ==> null ref exception ==> crashed game.

We're developing on Unity3D, which is free but not open-source. As much of the game code as possible will be open and exposed to the player in-game without breaking the security model and content created in Code Hero will be importable to and exportable from Unity3D. There's a code.license and code.permissions field, so it is possible that player could choose how to license the code they create.

Code Hero is about creating the future, and we definitely care about making it fun for players who want to build and accomplish things that really mean something for humanity. First and foremost, Code Hero is designed to spur real accomplishment so the conflicts and challenges in the game are spurring the player to acheive real code mastery and creativity that could set lives in new directions and spur invention and achievement which benefits us all.